Review: Nerf Mega Magnus (repost)

The Nerf Mega Magnus is the second release in Hasbro's newest blaster series after the Centurion (counting both the Rebelle and Zombie Strike as sub-releases of the N-Strike Elite). While firing the same large Mega darts as the Centurion, the Magnus is a far better designed blaster, suffering none of the jamming issues that plague the Centurion (with one minor niggle I'll describe below).

The range is listed on the box as 85 feet (down from the 100 feet claim) on the Centurion, and my testing was getting about 45 feet flat (with one 70 feet shot).

The blaster comes with three Mega darts, which load into the built-in magazine from above:

The darts are loaded while the slide is pulled back (blaster then being half-cocked), then sliding the slide forward into firing position. While this means that you can't keep all three darts in the blaster un-cocked, there is a little trick I worked out: Load up all three darts, fire one, then carefully push that dart back into the muzzle of the barrel. If you push it in just enough so that the front of the dart is level with the front of the barrel, then when you next cock the blaster it will load that dart cleanly, and still have two more darts ready to fire!

Finally, on to the one small design niggle I have with the Magnus: there's a small part of the slide mechanism which can catch when the slide is all the way forward (both when cocked and un-cocked). A little jiggling of the slide will free it up, and if that doesn't manage it, then pressing the tiny little orange button on the side of the blaster just in front of the trigger should release it. I haven't yet had an actual jam requiring me to use that button to unjam things, but once or twice the slide mechanism has caught enough that hitting the button has been required to fix things. Especially after the Centurion debacle, it really seems as though Hasbro need to spend a fair bit more of their budget on functional testing.

All that said, I've been very happy with my Magnus, it fits well in the hand and has a decent weight to it. I'm looking forward to seeing what the third entry in the Mega trio will be–I'm currently betting on something similar in general body design to the Retaliator/Stryfe, utilising an external magazine system. I guess we'll have to wait and see!